Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/692

676 the ancestor gods: "O ye, our fathers! be not angry with us. We, your children, bring you this miserably inadequate feast from our impoverished gardens, this wretched root of yagona for you to drink. We are poor, we are miserable. And another thing—be not angry with us if, for a while, we give up worshiping you. It is our mind to worship the foreigner's God for a while, yet, nevertheless, be not angry with us." Then the ancestor gods ate the spiritual essence of the yams, and the missionary lunched on its grosser material fiber, and enjoyed it greatly.

In 1876 the natives of Fiji had all nominally embraced Christianity—outwardly they conformed to the new faith—but at the end of 1885 strange rumors were brought to the coast by native travelers from the mountains. A prophet had arisen, who was passing through the villages, saying to the people, "Leave all and follow me." His teachings were an ingenious compound of Christianity and heathenism. He said that when Nacirikaumoli and Nakausabaria (two of the ancestral chiefs, described in their Saga) sailed away after their defeat by Degei, they went to the land of the white men, who wrote a book about them, which is the Bible; only they lied about their names, falsely calling them Jehovah and Jesus. They were about to appear and bring with them all the ancestors of the Fijians. The millennium would come, the missionaries and the Government would be driven into the sea, and every one of the faithful would have shopfuls of English goods. Those who believed that he was sent before, to prepare their way would have immortality, but the unbelieving would perish. The white men who came in the men-of-war, looking through glass instruments, who falsely said that they were surveying, were really looking for the coming of the divine twins. In the meantime the faithful were to drill as soldiers and the women to minister in the temples. Temples were secretly built at Drau-ni-ivi and other places, and behind the curtain, where the priest and the women sat, the god might be heard to descend with a low, whistling sound. There was some controversy between the faithful whether Degei was God or the devil. Many inclined to the latter belief, because Satan took serpent form, and the traditions describe Degei as a gigantic serpent lying coiled in his cave in Uakauvadra, and causing thunder when he turns his huge bulk. The new prophet fixed the day for the resurrection of the ancestors, but he was arrested and deported to Rotuma, and the outbreak was stamped out for a time; but in 1892 it reappeared, and the Government then decided to remove the village of Drauni-ivi, the fount of all these superstitions, and the houses were removed and the site leveled to the ground. We have by no means, however, heard the last of Fijian mythology. There was another outbreak about a year ago.